[TR] Colchuck Peak - North Buttress Couloir 6/2/2012

[bgratias]

Trip: Colchuck Peak - North Buttress Couloir

 

Date: 6/2/2012

 

Trip Report:

Three of us climbed the NBC this past Saturday. We left the car around 8:30, and the couloir was pretty sloppy by the time we got to it. I'd recommend leaving a little earlier or starting from the lake (or just being faster than us.) The couloir was still filled with snow, and was definitely skiable with only a couple narrow points. We crossed a couple rock sections on the upper face, so I'm not sure if you could ski the whole thing. We had planned on skiing the route, but the upper face was too scary, so we skied the Colchuck Glacier instead. There were several other parties planning to climb the route on Sunday, so I'd imagine a really good bootpack is in place.

 

 

Looking up the couloir

 

Traverse into the couloir

 

Reaching the notch

 

 

 

Traversing onto the face

 

The upper face

 

 

 

 

Trying to find a way onto the summit

 

Another party on the subpeak next to the Colchuck-Dragontail col (I have more pictures of you - PM me if you want them.)

 

Skiing the Glacier

 

Approach Notes:

A bootpack is in around the lake.

[SeanO]

Great pics, especially for beta on the face. Looks like weather held up too!

[bgratias]

Yeah, the weather was better than we expected. We got socked in a couple of times, and even had it snow on us for a bit, but overall it was nice. It seemed like Colchuck was a distinct dividing line for the weather - Stuart was super cloudy all day, but Colchuck Lake stayed fairly clear.

[ira]

I did the NBC on May 25th and there is already a significant amount of snow melt on the north face. there was very little exposed rock on our route up except for one scary/icy step up on rock until we got to the summit area.

 

Very fun climb.